Some Facts About Ericsson’s M700 Mobile Broadband Platform

Ericsson recently announced its M700 mobile platform. Among its specs:

It has peak data rates of up to 100Mbps in the downlink and up to 50Mbps in the uplink.

It’s compatible with networks around the world, can support up to six bands, including the 700 MHz bands, and supporting bandwidths range between 1.4MHz and 20MHz.

Silicon will arrive in 2008 and the commercial release is set for 2009.

The first products based on the M700 will be data devices such as laptop modems, express cards and USB modems for notebooks, as well as other small-form modems suitable for consumer electronic devices.

Products based on the platform are expected in 2010.

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We have written about Ericsson’s plans in the past. The company’s LTE chipset and software solution for 700 MHz devices is already in development and will be available in mid-2009. Stacey was recently given a first-hand demo of Ericsson’s 700 MHz/LTE network.

Ericsson has more info on “HSPA, LTE and Beyond” at www.ericsson.com/ericsson/press/facts_figures/doc/hspa_lte.pdf.

Completely agree with Rudolf. The air interface is as efficient as it can get. The bottleneck is the backhaul. People pitch using DSL/Cable as backhaul without realizing that DSL/Cable is not carrier-grade. Other’s said that Ethernet is the solution but you need to put fiber and new equipments on the CO’s. Microwave may be the only option but MW requires licensing, antennas, $$$. There is no easy solution to upgrade the backhaul infrastructure.

The biggest problem for all this wireless sweetness will be to roll out fibre to backhaul the traffic. You can’t do 100mbit/s backhaul over existing copper infrastructure and wireless is at its limits. So at the en of every antenna you do need a fibre. If you envision a future where people will have access to the net regardless of infrastructure. (or different, where you choose an access provider who will provide access over any available infrastructure), than it’s easy to see that every curb will need a fibre. No fibre, no mobile broadband.